David Cameron attacks Gordon Brown's 'cover-up' over 10 per cent cuts

David Cameron has demanded that Gordon Brown explain why he has refused to
admit that Labour would cut services after a leaked document exposed the
truth about the Prime Minister’s secret plans for 10 per cent cuts over four
years.

The disclosure of Treasury papers outlining how Whitehall budgets would be cut is potentially devastating for Mr Brown.

He has attempted to brand the Tory leader “Mr 10 per cent” over recent months, but is now accused of planning similar savings.

At the start of a press conference the Conservatives seized on the revelation contained in secret Treasury papers and handed out a document titled Labour’s 100 per cent lies about 10 per cent cuts.

Mr Cameron stopped just short of calling Mr Brown a liar, but explained: “What he has said is very clear... he has to explain himself. It seems as if he was saying one thing in Parliament while his Government was planning to do something different.

"The words are there, the document is in your hands, he has to explain whether he was being straight with people or not."

Mr Cameron said the Tories had been passed confidential Treasury papers showing the Government’s expectations for the public finances in the three-year period starting next April. Marked “confidential” and dated the day before April’s Budget, it shows departmental spending falling every year from 2011 to 2014.

The papers were part of the Treasury’s work on this year’s Budget, which set out plans to increase the national debt to £1.4 trillion. Economists say that the scale of Government borrowing is such that spending will have to be cut, and the Tories have said cuts are inevitable.

Although Mr Brown this week accepted that Labour will have no choice but to cut spending after the next election, for several months he sought to portray that election as a choice between “Labour investment and Tory cuts”.

"Wednesday after Wednesday, the Prime Minister stood up in the House of Commons and repeated the line that the coming battle was between Labour investment on the one hand and Tory cuts on the other," said Mr Cameron.

"All those words have turned to dust and, as I consistently warned week after week, reality has now caught up with our Prime Minister.

"Gordon Brown was denying something that his own civil servants were telling him was true.

"In this confidential Treasury document, written just five months ago, the Government plans to cut spending on public services over the next four years.

"The tables also reveal that the Labour Government is planning to cut capital expenditure - that is spending on schools, hospitals, roads and other capital projects - over the same period.

"Let me make it clear: they are not wrong to be planning cuts but they are wrong to try to cover up their plans for cuts.

"This is about honesty, it is about trust. This is about not taking people for fools. And on this issue, as I have to say on so many others, the Prime Minister does not seem to have learned."

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) had calculated that the Budget plans will mean an average 2.3 per cent annual cut for Whitehall departments in the next spending round.

The Treasury papers show that the Government is actually expecting the average cut to be 9.3 per cent.

That suggests the Treasury is expecting benefits payments and debt interest costs to be higher than the IFS had estimated, and tax revenues to be weaker.

The leaked papers also show that by 2013/14, the Treasury expects to be paying out £63 billion on interest payments on the national debt.

That figure, higher than the education budget for England, was omitted from the published Budget papers.